Its because of the type of drive the 360 has in it. Its the same type of garbage drive that in most laptops except with a motor to close the door. If you shake a laptop with a disc running full speed have fun with a destroyed disc/drive.

Gotcha, though I have heard people blame all problems on moving from horizontal to vertical.

moving it does play a major part in it. laptop drives at least holds a disc in a set place and all components making up the drive is held together properly so they dont move. the 360's drive when moved around the laser can shift position. If aligned to close to the disc, the disc will be burnt. Another thing is the spindle that holds the disc seems to be flimsy and bends when moved too. Thats the major plus side for the PS3 and Wii's drives. You can move the PS3 and Wii all you want while they are reading games. The laser will never move the way it isnt and the discs are locked into place by the internal hardware.

I stood talking to the manager of EB games who came to complain about the game disc being destroyed. Me and him both said its not the game's fault your kid moved the system to many times, without any care.  

Heh, everybody is getting all worked up over the red rings and this guy was able to fix it (or temporarily fix it) in like 10 seconds.

Looks more people are jumping on the bandwagon. This time in Florida. SAme issue though.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201002267

I seriously doubt that all the people with scratched discs moved their console. In fact I dont see why anyone would move the console while its on. They may move before they turn it on or maybe after but not while playing. I also doubt that many actually place that thing vertically when you can plainly see that it would block the vents. No I think this is a real issue and MS needs to take responsibility for it. I also think they should recall all the original 360s not just give out longer warranties. That console is defective it needs to be fixed once and for all. Unfortunatly with MS, despite how rich they are, they will never fix anything on their own if no one sues them.